There are three distinguished in fierceness: Israel among the nations, the dog among animals, and the cock among birds. —Rabbi Simeon, Tractate Bezah 25b, Babylonian Talmud (Quincentenary ed.), Soncino Pr.

Where is it possible to find a group of Jews who are committed to Israel, and whose children are likely to honor that commitment? The answer is, in a synagogue on the Sabbath. —Elliott Abrams, "Can Jews Survive?"

It is a fact that the Jewish religion is above all Jewish nationalism ... One must be a Jew first and a human being second. —Moses Hess, Rome and Jerusalem, as quoted in The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time by Moshe Menuhin.

Why, then, does truth generate hatred ... unless it be that truth is loved in such a way that those who love something else besides her wish that to be the truth which they do love. ... Therefore, they hate the truth for the sake of whatever it is that they love in place of the truth. —Augustine of Hippo, Confessions (Bk. X, Ch. XXIII, 34)

Friday, April 24, 2009

... anti-Zionists would be hard put to find any affirmatively identifying Jew who would not view them as mortal enemies. Studies and opinion polls have shown that 99 percent of American Jewry identifies with the right of Jews to the Jewish state.

For religious Jews, as we have seen, Israel and Jewish nationhood are part of their religious creed. An anti-Zionist is therefore an enemy of religious Jews. As for secular Jews, anti-Zionists oppose the one aspect of Judaism which they passionately affirm--Israel. The only Jews who could see anti-Zionism as anything other than an expression of antisemitism affirm neither Jewish nationhood nor the Jewish religion.

Notice that Prager and Telushkin use the ambiguous phrase "identifies with." I actually think this speaks to a certain mindset among some American Jews. While they may not be full blown Zionists themselves, they give prime consideration not to questions of right or wrong but to the well-being of Jews.

To cite one prominent example, although typically characterized as an anti-Zionist, in 1914, Henry Morgenthau, Sr. used his position as the US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire to have an American warship, the USS Tennessee, sent to Alexandria, Egypt "ostensibly to protect American citizens. In fact, it made possible the evacuation of many impoverished Jewish refugees, including about one hundred prominent Zionists who had been released from prison. Among them were the young David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, who were destined to become, respectively, Israel's first prime minister and second president."

Ben-Gurion was no impoverished refugee but a commited Zionist who voluntarily migrated to Palestine to participate in the Jewish takeover. In a memoir, Ben-Gurion said he "never suffered anti-Semitic persecution" in his native Poland.

Earlier, Morgenthau had arranged for the another American warship, the USS North Carolina, to ferry $50,000 in gold from Jewish financier Jacob Schiff to "Zionist authorities" in Palestine. This same Schiff, another "anti-Zionist," used his financial power to, among other things, help bring about the defeat of the Russians in the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War.

Addendum: In the incident involving the USS North Carolina, Morgenthau made the arrangements "through the good offices of his friend, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels." According to the final report of the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission, prior to his Navy appointment, Josephus Daniels was "a hearty supporter of the Democratic Party's white supremacy platform" and was "enlisted ... as editor of the Raleigh News and Observer to be the 'militant voice of White Supremacy.' " Inasmuch as Zionism is run through with strong elements of Jewish-White supremacism it is not surprising that Morgenthau would befriend a known racist like Daniels. Birds of a feather ...